Selected Letters of Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Dostoyevsky's letters constitute the most intimate portrait of him we have. Through their raw, direct, emotional voice we see him in prison fighting off the despair of solitary confinement; in Siberia, mingling with peasant, fellow prisoners; and wrestling with his artistic and spiritual demons. There are letters to his long-suffering wife, written from gambling spas where he acted out his obsession like a character from one of his novels. After years of ducking his creditors by living in Europe, where his frustrations spilled over into tirades against the West, the novelist returned to St. Petersburg and met with success. As editor and sole contributor to a monthly journal of opinion, he became a public figure, and the letters reveal how the themes of The Brothers Karamazov first crystallized in his monthly. This collection, drawn from the four-volume, definitive Russian edition, offers the fullest selection of Dostoyevsky's correspondence available in English. Frank is author of a widely acclaimed, multivolume biography of Dostoyevsky, and the late Goldstein wrote Dostoyevsky and the Jews. (May 28)